Sunday, May 28, 2006

A Lesson in DELEGATING blame.
Or, it's my own little world, I can arrange it the way I want!

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. I'm actually blogging at 5:30 in the morning. I must be operating under some new set of delusions that I haven't yet familiarized myself with. It's the weekend, and I kinda lose focus anyway. I don't know why. But I have lost focus. In spite of the fact I have new glasses (that I'm still trying to get used to). This post is literally being done on the run, because I've got to get some sleep; I'm going to a jam session today, later today (LATER TODAY, CAN IT BE???)...It all started two weeks ago when an item I ordered came in the mail. It was a record player/CD recorder I ordered. Yep, I can burn CD's from records! (Or I can plug in a cassette deck or CD deck in the "auxiliary" jack.) Well, the unit sat in my living room for a WEEK because I was scared to touch the thing. You know, technology and all that. 3 or 4 days ago, I began studying the owners' manual. Reading it, savoring it (can you 'savor' an owners' manual?), and as soon as I began to partially understand it (which took a couple of days), I decided to try and operate the thing.

And you know what? It is so EASY! (Whack! on the forehead.) So now I am recording batches and batches of old obscure junk 45's that have been laying around on the fringes of my record collection for years. As soon as I record all of the 45's I don't care about (mostly uncharted, obscure 45's by groups and individuals who never had any success), I'm gonna give 'em away. It's a way to clean house, yet keep the music. So I've been going "hog wild" (a phrase my Dad used to use), dubbing, dubbing and dubbing some MORE! I've gotten into a bad habit of buying myriad amounts of old second-hand 45s in junk stores. Gotta stop that. For cryin' out loud, I even have a record that teaches you to train a PARAKEET to talk! "Pretty boy....pretty boy...pretty boy..." SHADDUP!!!!!!! Other records I plan to junk are "chamber music" records, anything that resembles a show tune, and old scratchy 45's with labels so worn you can hardly read them.

Once I do that, then I'm gonna do the same thing with record albums. Them things are heavy, especially when you have thousands of them. The LP's I'm not really attached to, I'll put 'em on CD, and then donate them off. Right offhand, I'd say I'd get rid of most anything that's come out after, say, 1985 or 1990; I don't care for a lot of the big-hair-band rock or the synthesized garbage that passes for music. I'd probably get rid of albums that don't really excite me all that much; I have a ton of Gordon Lightfoot stuff, for instance, and he's good, but I don't really NEED 'em; too much of that sensitive singer-songwriter stuff and, well...ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz.....anyway, I can get rid of the vinyl I don't want to keep, but still have the music on CD. And, I'll cut down on the overall tonnage of vinyl I have. I still have about a thousand or so rock albums, that I can't bear to part with. I gave away 20 BOXES of rock albums 3 or 4 years ago; stuff I didn't really care about. Most of it, I'd bought used for 50 cents or a dollar apiece, so no big loss.

So anyway, I blame the haphazard nature of this post, and indeed the LATENESS of this post, on the fact that I've been spending all my time burning CD'S; going hog wild! (snort) Ack Ack Aaaaaaack. Oh, and I also got a 2-hour phone call I got from a friend during the burning of CD's. So I had to stop doing that to yak on the phone (well, I only get about 2 or 3 phone calls a month; no one knows I'm alive, basically), which pushed back the burning of the CD I was burning. So by the time I got on computer, about 3AM, I had Ebay stuff I had to deal with; I had a bunch of e-mails to delete, sites to visit, which finally led me to typing this blog here. Why I feel I have to do this, I don't know. But I won't write anything more until Monday. I promise. Unless I get goofy again and change my mind. So, you can see that I'm great at delegating blame. Delegating it to anything else, besides ME. After all, it can't be that I don't have my priorities straight, that I'm a total wack-job without a lick of common sense; as a matter of fact, it can't be my fault at all. The CD burner made me late in getting this post out. The phone call that pushed back my CD burning also interfered. The Dog ate my homework. I got my tie jammed in the toaster. I haven't yet re-set my clocks after the time change. I just can't tear myself away from those infomercials. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Such a case of "projection" occurred in the political arena around here recently. An astute (or not) politician of the "county commissioner" persuasion got voted out of office. "Hmph", he sniffed. "I'm a local boy, how could those mean old voters vote me out?" It wasn't HIS OWN fault, rrrright? HE had nothing to do with his own demise, rrrright? And now he's taken out his frustrations on the mean old newspaper and its associated interactive blogsite (www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo) for reporting the many problems in this area, high property taxes among them, that have not been adequately addressed. Our county courthouse has BANNED its employees access to this newspaper's blogsite. I suppose they can still surf porn sites if they want, tho. Strange world, huh? As such, it feels like there's been a death in the family...


____________________
...goodbye, old friend. We hardly knew ye.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

cdadave - the ban on HBO needs to be lifted ASAP. If we hit them hard enough and if we don't let up, I predict by the end of next week. If they are smart, they will lift it Tuesday afternoon. As Bayviews says - 'ridiculous.'

They ban DFO -- they ban us.

8:10 AM  
Blogger Idaho Dad said...

Yep, I can burn CD's from records!

And so it begins...

It won't be much longer before you're ripping those CDs to your hard drive, and then transferring them to an iPod.

You're doomed!

But seriously, I have yet to do what you're doing... Copying vinyl albums to CD. I have a turntable, somewhere, but have never figured out how to hook it up to the computer.

I still have about 40 vinyl LPs in a box. I kept the ones that have a lot of meaning to me, including all my Beatles albums.

7:33 PM  
Blogger Lil ol' me... said...

Phil...there is some sort of nefarious computer program that allows you to burn CD's from LP's. I have a non-computer CD-burning deck with turntable included, so I totally bypass the computer. I got it for about $300, and I can't believe how easy it is to use. And I didn't know till now you needed a computer in order to fill up an Ipod. So I'm still learning...

Stebbi, I am bemused at all of this, because I'm sure courthouse employees are racing home to see what Huckleberries says. What is tragic is the potentially oppressive mood at the courthouse over the next few months. I KNOW Gus Johnson; I went to SCHOOL with him, and he's TOTALLY surprised me here. He was a pretty cool guy in High School.

10:40 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home